“First Confession” by Frank O’Connor

“First Confession”
by Frank O’Connor

Sometimes you go through periods when you just can’t find anything to read.  You’re stressed; you’re busy; you’re a little overwhelmed.  When you find the time to sit down and relax with a good book, you can’t choose one.  You pick up one book, read a few pages, put it down; you pick up another, flip through, put it down.  You toss aside books you’ve been waiting months to read and old favorites you’ve read dozens of times.  Nothing fits your mood or grabs your scattered attention.  You can’t make a commitment.  You have become a Commitment Phobe in the realm of reading.  (Note that I have not done an entry in awhile so I know of what I speak.)  That’s when I turn to short stories.  Of course when one mentions “Catholic” and “short stories” in the same sentence, readers immediately think of Flannery O’Connor, and she is well worth reading (and will merit an entry here someday), but because it’s March, I will recommend at this time Frank (no relation to Flannery) O’Connor’s  “First Confession.”  Not only is O’Connor an Irish writer which makes St. Patrick’s Day an excellent time for reading him, but now is also the season of First Confessions and First Communions.  Catholic aunts, uncles, cousins, godparents, etc. will be attending numerous First Communions in the coming weeks following Easter (I myself am already engaged for two) and memories of one’s own first sacraments – especially in cradle Catholics – will be very near the surface of the mind and heart.

“First Confession” is an extremely humorous, laugh-out-loud-in-public-even-if-you-embarrass-yourself, story.  The narrator Jackie doesn’t see the situation of having to make his first confession as humorous at all.  In fact he’s desperately worried about burning in hell in the afterlife and the misery his grandmother causes in his present, corporeal life.  As he sees it there is no way possible he can refrain from sinning, no way he can admit the heinous nature of his sins and therefore no way he can escape eternal damnation.  He can’t even operate a confessional correctly.  But it’s the adult mind looking back on the absurdities of the situation of a six year old and the seriousness and literalness with which he approaches everything that brings out the humor.  Frank McCourt’s recounting of his First Confession and First Communion in his memoir Angela’s Ashes is told in a similar fashion although O’Connor’s short story is much less grim.  (McCourt’s grandmother sends him back to the confessional three times in the same day because she disagrees with Father’s assessment of young Frank’s state of grace.)

“First Confession” is available in numerous collections and anthologies including Collected Stories by Frank O’Connor at Doherty.

FYI – The UST Catholic Fiction Reading Group will read O’Connor’s short story at their organizational meeting on Sunday March 16^th at 6pm in Doherty Library.  All members of the UST community are invited to attend.  See our Facebook page for more details. 

Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature edited by Mary R. Reichardt

Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature

edited by Mary R. Reichardt

Greenwood Press, 2004

ISBN 0-313-32289-9 (set)

Most reference books on Catholic fiction were written before or during the heyday of Catholic fiction and literary criticism in the 50’s and early 60’s when Catholic culture had a tendency to be more parochial in nature and reference books more didactic.  A recent edition to this body of work, however, is the very thorough and very useful Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature.  This encyclopedia covers all genres of Catholic literature from 397AD with Augustine’s Confessions through 1997, so it does include non-fiction works.  The earliest novel discussed in John Henry Newman’s Loss and Gain, The Story of a Convert published in 1848.  The second oldest novel is Orestes Brownson’s The Spirit Rapper published in 1854.  Most of the works included in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, are either fiction or poetry, and the majority of the works included overall are in these categories.  The encyclopedia is two volumes and lists 73 authors in alphabetical order.  (Two authors – John Henry Newman and Evelyn Waugh are granted two articles a piece).  Since the articles are so rich, it’s a little frustrating that the encyclopedia includes so few authors, but what it lacks in breadth it makes up for in depth.  Each entry begins with a biography of the author (including process of conversion is applicable) followed by a plot summary and critical discussion of one major work.  These discussions include references to the spiritual elements and the Catholic content within the work so look at the works as examples of specifically Catholic literature.  They are, therefore, more than a general critical overview.  Each article is written by an expert on that particular author and concludes with a short bibliography of further reading.  The entire encyclopedia concludes with short biographies of the contributors and a lengthier list of additional resources.    The encyclopedia does make a concerted effort, according to its introduction, to include many women writers and writers of “diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds.”  It is interesting to note that the latest work discussed is Denise Levertov’s The Stream and the Sapphire published in 1997.  Admittedly the encyclopedia was published in 2004 and creating such a reference book is a lengthy process, but  have no works of considerable Catholic Fiction been published in the last ten years?  The Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature is available at Doherty Library.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
by Muriel Spark
J.P. Lippincott, 1962

A visitor to Sister Helena of the Transfiguration, formerly Sandy Stranger and now a cloistered nun renowned for the publication of her work in psychology “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace,” asks her “What were the main influences of your school days, Sister Helena?  Were they literary or political or personal?  Was it Calvinism?”  Her response?  “There was a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime.”

Miss Jean Brodie often tells her students “give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.”  This may explain why Sister Helena, even years after Miss Brodie’s death, still attributes all of who she is to that one influential teacher.

Most people could probably name a Miss Jean Brodie from their past.  The teacher that expanded their minds and frightened them out of their wits.  The teacher who gave them the greatest gifts of imagination, creativity, independence, individualism, intellectual rigor, and who also tried to crush these very qualities out of them.  The teacher one never forgets and whom one never looks back on sentimentally or without a confusion of emotions. 

Miss Brodie is a bundle of paradoxes.  She is a free spirit, a progressive educator, an artistic, sensitive woman who is fascinated by the fascism of  Mussolini and Hitler, mainly because of its ability to organize and regulate.  Miss Brodie is able to cast off all societal conventions because she is in her prime, but she creates a set of incomprehensible rules for her girls such as one does not leave a window open more than six inches, for six inches is plenty and more is vulgar. 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie takes place in the 1930’s in Edinburgh, Scotland but was published in 1962. The setting of Calvinist Edinburgh mirrors the dark, dingy, depressing atmosphere of post-war England.  Although the moral conventions of the thirty’s are present in the plot, the open attitude toward sex of the sixty’s is prominent in the narration.  That is not to say that the book advocates the sexual freedoms of the last half of the last century, although the authorial voice does not condemn them.  But like most ideas addressed in the novel, sexual indiscretion is neither all good nor all bad.  Good comes out of immoral acts, even the most immoral intentions.  So does evil.  Perhaps only fascism is judged as completely evil, but those who are attracted to fascism are not. 

Sandy, now Sister Helena, says that “the influences of one’s teens are very important” even if “they provide something to react against.”  Sandy was not raised Catholic, nor was she raised Calvinist, nor with any particular religious convictions at all.  Miss Brodie exposed her young students to all kinds of spiritual views but disdained Catholicism for Catholics, she said, cannot and do not think for themselves.  Yet, Sandy’s acceptance of Catholicism is a conscious and deliberate act, more so than Miss Brodie’s rejection of it.  And it continues a conscious and deliberate decision, for although Sandy finds her true self in Catholicism, and the ability to discipline her insights about people into an influential book on morality and psychology,  she does not find peace and comfort, nor is she freed from the influences of Miss Brodie.[1]   

The narrator of Jean Brodie seems to be an omniscient one, yet at the same time the story is filtered through the eyes of Sandy, the student most like Miss Brodie, the student most misunderstood by Miss Brodie, the student who, as Miss Brodie predicted several times, did indeed go too far one day.  The narrative is not straightforward either but jumbled flashbacks and repetitive phrases piece the story and the characters together.  The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a short book and easy to read and follow, but it is not a comfortable book.  It’s as confusing and disturbing as memories of that teacher – you know the one – your Miss Jean Brodie.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is available at Doherty Library.

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[1]Benilde Montgomery, “Spark and Newman: Jean Brodie Reconsidered,” in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 43, Spring 1997, pp. 94-106. Reprinted in Novels for Students, Vol. 22.

The Last Hurrah by Edwin O’Connor

The Last Hurrah

by Edwin O’Connor

Little, Brown and Company, 1956

 

Frank Skeffington is running for mayor again, probably for the last time since he’s even now 72.  He has presided over this major eastern seaboard city (never named in the book) for much of his adult life and even spent two terms as governor of the state.  Over the years he has built up a number of loyal friends, colleagues and slavish followers.  And, as most successful politicians do, he’s created a number of enemies as well.  But Skeffington’s greatest enemy is the passage of time.  The last hurrah of the title is this election, and in fact O’Connor coined this common phrase that refers to one’s last moment of glory before an ultimate demise. 

Skeffington rose to power when politics was the only way out of the slums for an Irish immigrant.  He’s taken good care of his people and himself as well.  He was the politician who was out in the wards, handing out goodies (jobs, dentures, city construction projects) to people while using public funds.  It was the period of ward politics, but ward politics is on its way out.  Skeffington himself says that in this election he’s running the last campaign of its kind.  He walks among the people giving speeches on street corners and in junior highs.  He knows his people, knows what they want, what they need and the difference.  But ward politics are dirty and hard-scrabble, and Skeffington has been a willing part of every brawl.  Even on the morning of the announcement of his bid for re-election, Skeffington announces the destruction of one of his longtime campaigners to his inner circle.

 

The story shows the passing of an era that had serious problems.  It was a time of fervent prejudices.  In fact, not so very unlike today, the first thing the Skeffington team does is trot out the leaders of the various ethnic groups in the city to show their united support for the mayor.  But the only thing the members of these groups hold in common is that they all have needs that Skeffington and his like have taken care of for years.  Skeffington did loyally take care of his people, but they were his people, and he chose those he cared for by which way they voted.  And Skeffington recognizes that it is the very success of this kind of politics that caused it’s destruction for he says of his politicians and sycophants that “their total dependence on favor from above had not left them with any great courage.”   Definitely many of the dated behaviors of O’Connor’s time are reflected in this book, particularly racial and ethnic prejudice.  There is an unfortunate, if realistic, use of racial epithets that makes the modern reader twinge. 

 

Even so, something is always lost as one era surpasses another.  One of Skeffington’s greatest enemies says “he sometimes wondered, when he talked to his sons, whether they who seemed to have overcome so many of the old passionate prejudices of their ancestors had not also managed to overcome some of their old passionate virtues?  In these neutral, tolerant times, did anyone really feel deeply about anything?. . . .  He contrasted this mild, automatic disgust with the violent shouts and empurpled faces that the name of Skeffington could occasion among his own contemporaries; he concluded that, even here, they swam in the new emotional shallows.  In a sense, of course, it was a good thing; but still, he thought, but still . . .”  In this new era of tolerance, there is a tolerance even of mediocrity.  It’s an era, the beginning of television, when a good looking, polite young man with a picturesque family can win an election even if he’s nothing more than second-rate.  O’Connor won the Golden Book Award from Catholic Writer’s Guild in 1957, and Joseph Bottom, in his review of a recent biography of Edwin O’Connor in First Things ,  speculates that his book was not only a last hurrah for ward politics but also for Catholic culture in the United States. 

 While not a political thriller by any means (the handwriting is on the wall with the title), The Last Hurrah is still a classic political novel and often has as much to say about our own reaction to politics as Skeffington’s constituency, for as he says “You don’t have to be interested in politics to be interested in the way people tick.  And they’re apt to tick a little bit differently in an election; something seems to happen to the average member of the body politic when he’s being persuaded to cast his vote for what I modestly refer to as the indispensable man.” All in all, the story is a great read for, as Skeffington tells his nephew, “a big political campaign, if it’s run right, is one of the greatest shows on earth.”  And this last hurrah of a huge personality, a corrupt yet compassionate man, a cultured yet ruthless politician, is indeed great entertainment.  The Last Hurrah is available at Doherty Library.    

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A Morbid Taste For Bones by Ellis Peters

A Morbid Taste for Bones: The First Chronicle of Brother Cadfael
by Ellis Peters
Mysterious Press, 1994
ISBN: 978-0446400152

A great way to handle the stress of the end of the semester is with a nice, short, light, comforting book like one of the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters (pseudonym for Edith Pargeter).  Relaxing with some light reading is a great way to cleanse the mind without deadening it, such as zoning out in front the TV tends to do.  It’s like eating sherbet to cleanse the palette between courses in a gourmet meal.  To prepare for my exams in my undergraduate days, I would insert reading Sherlock Holmes short stories between studying and taking the tests. 

 

Brother Cadfael is in many ways like Sherlock Holmes.  He uses forensics coupled with a little psychology to solve crimes.  But his forensics is based on clear observation of the natural world around him for during his medieval era there was more suspicion than science when dealing with murder.  As the herbalist of the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul in Shrewsbury, Brother Cadfael has a vast knowledge of area flora and fauna as well as rare plants and medicinal practices he brought back from the East.  As a former soldier in the Crusades who entered the monastery when he was forty, he also has a vast knowledge of human nature and its passions.

 

The Brother Cadfael stories are set during the civil war in England between King Stephen and Empress Maud in the twelfth century.  The Normans only relatively recently occupied England in 1066, and there are a lot of interesting cultural observations of the mixing of the Normans, the Saxons and the Welsh.  Cadfael himself is Welsh but can also speak in English (and one presumes in French since he has many conversations with the Norman nobility).  Peters not only develops the historical ambience of the period, she also re-creates the world of a medieval monastery, and there is much reference to the daily life of the monks including singing the daily Office, offering hospitality to strangers, confessing before the abbot, etc.  She also addresses the political relationship between the monastery and the town which mirrors the relationship between the larger church and the secular government. 

 

Despite these historical and cultural details, Brother Cadfael himself has a modern sensibility.  Cadfael was a soldier of the Crusades, and he does not regret it, but much emphasis in the stories are on the waste and repetitiveness of war, particularly civil war.  Cadfael also takes a mild view of sexual indiscretions, and although he calls those he counsels to a stricter form of living, it is for their psychological and spiritual health that he is concerned rather than their potential destination in the afterlife. 

 

Cadfael also takes a modern, somewhat skeptical, view of the accouterments of Catholic spirituality.  In the first book of the series, A Morbid Taste for Bones, Cadfael joins in a pilgrimage to Wales to gather the relics of one Saint Winifred who was martyred there.  Cadfael is asked on the journey because he speaks Welsh, which the Norman Prior Robert does not, not because he has any interest in bones of a young girl.  Prior Robert wants the relics because having them at Shrewsbury Abbey will turn it into a pilgrimage destination with all the fame and money that would entail.  The final major member of the journey is Brother Columbanus, a delicate young monk susceptible to visions and catatonic fits.  The members of the Welsh village do not want to give up their beloved Saint Winifred, but these English monks cannot understand their reluctance.  Soon the leading figure of the opposition to monks winds up dead.  Brother Cadfael eventually brings peace to all concerned, and Saint Winifred becomes his life long patroness even though he cares not at all where her physical bones may actually lie.  To Cadfael, she is always with him, and he returns in prayer for her help many times throughout the series. 

 

Although the twenty one Cadfael books are developed chronologically, there is no need to read them in any particular order.  Any necessary details from previous stories are seamlessly reintroduced when needed.  Cadfael paperbacks are short, small, easy to carry and available almost anywhere such as area public libraries and used bookstores.

 

The entry on Cadfael in Wikipedia lists the publication dates as well as the dates of action of the books. 

This site developed by devoted fan Steve C. gives a good deal of background to the books.

 

Kitty from the Start by Judy Delton

Kitty from the Start
Judy Delton
Houton Mifflin, 1987
ISBN: 978-0395428474

Should you be looking for a nice Christmas or First Communion gift for a young girl, Kitty from the Start by Judy Delton would be a good choice.  Kitty herself is in third-grade, but the book should appeal to readers from 3^rd-5^th.  Good second grade readers could enjoy the book as well.  Or maybe you yourself just want a break from reading Aquinas, Homer, or Freud.

 

Kitty is in third grade during the early 1940’s.  Although World War II is raging in Europe, Kitty is not very aware of it.  What she is aware of is moving from her well-known, well-loved school St. James’ to the new and unknown St. Anthony’s (where the church is actually in the school and where they make First Communion in Third Grade instead of Second!)  At St. Anthony’s Kitty does quickly make friends, just as her parents told her she would, but they are two such very different friends.  Mary Margaret is a perfect child, always neat, always has her homework done, always appropriately dressed, and always pointing out what others are doing wrong.  Mary Margaret goes to Mass everyday, and Kitty admires her and wants to be holy like her.  But she’s also attracted to the lifestyle of Eileen who likes to play “Confession” by turning her closet into a confessional and taking the role of a very old, very mean and very loud priest.  Kitty enjoys playing “Confession” but is sure Mary Margaret wouldn’t approve and is pretty sure it’s not holy to participate.

 

I related to Kitty a lot because, even though I grew up in the post-Vatican II 1970’s and not in Kitty’s pre-Vatican II 1940’s, we had a lot in common.  And I suspect a lot of kids who grew up Catholic do as well.  I too was attracted to the saintly life and adapted various bizarrely pious acts (I once tried to only wear blue to show my devotion to the Madonna but my school uniform was green and my mother refused to buy me all new clothes).  But I also enjoyed playing the titillating and somewhat gory game of “Martyrs.”

 

Kitty is told through the point of view of a nine year old girl which leads to the one difficulty with the book.  A geography lesson on Africa is presented in a patronizing manner and uses a racially insensitive name Bambo for a child in Africa that the American children are supposed to relate to.  While it is probably realistic that this lesson would have been presented to these children in the 1940’s in such a way, with only Kitty’s perceptions presented, there is no authorial voice indicating to today’s young readers that such an attitude is inappropriate.  An adult should discuss this issue with the child reader.

 

However, this instance is very brief and all in all, it’s a rather sweet book.  Kitty from the Start is actually the first in a series (although the last written) of novels about Kitty, Mary Margaret and Eileen.  The series eventually takes Kitty and her friends through high school.

 

Kitty from the Start is available at area public libraries.    

The Catholic Novel: An Annotated Bibliography by Albert J. Menendez

The Catholic Novel: An Annotated Bibliography
by Albert J. Menendez
Garland Publishing, 1988
ISBN: 0824085345

This bibliography is a treasure trove of obscure Catholic novels.  Many of these titles Menendez found scouring used bookstores, that haven of serendipity that is, alas, rapidly disappearing.  The introduction begins with a short history of the Catholic novel beginning in the nineteenth-century for Menendez designates the 1820’s as the beginnings of the genre.  He suggests that The Betrothed (1828) by Allessandro Monzoni was the first Catholic novel in English, and that The Abbe Constantin (1882) by Ludovic Halevy was the first to become a best seller.  As with most compilations this sort, Menendez feels compelled to begin with how he defines Catholic fiction and therefore with what will be included in his list.  He states, “A Catholic novel is one which reflects the values, culture and conflicts of the Roman Catholic faith and its community.  This may seem slightly unecumenical, but it is necessary to establish some parameters to differentiate the Catholic novel from other kinds of religious fiction.”  Therefore, although Menendez includes works by non-Catholics, he does not include works by Catholics which are not about specifically Catholic subjects.  Thus, the bibliography does not include some great Catholic writers such as Flannery O’Connor since most of her short stories are grounded in the culture of the fundamentalist Protestant South.  On the other hand, he does include Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun though not many think of Hawthorne a Catholic author (even though his daughter converted to Catholicism and established a religious order).  Menendez also includes books he says are “primarily critical of Catholicism” though he omits “so-called ‘anti-Catholic’ fiction.”  What the selections do include is a wonderful array of subjects and subcategories such as the Catholic historical novel, the Vatican thriller, and the Catholic murder mystery.  You can also find books on growing up Catholic, Irish Catholicism, particular saints (e.g. Saint Maria Goretti) and much more.  Menendez lists 1703 novels, in alphabetical order by author, beginning in the 1820’s.  The bibliography was published in 1988, so it includes novels published through 1987.  He also gives information about 489 critical works on religious novels in general, general works on Catholic novels, and criticism about major authors.  He ends the bibliography with an idiosyncratic list of the “100 Greatest Catholic Novels.”  Finally, there is a subject index and a title index.  Most of the works have short annotations but some are more helpful than others.  One novel, for example, is described as “A valiant and witty priest shapes the spiritual destiny of a small Ohio town.”  Bibliographies like this are difficult to create, and none can contain everything you need, but for a good overview of the progress of the Catholic novel in America and for exposure to Catholic novels you’d never find anywhere else, this work is exceptionally useful.  Menendez’s bibliography is available in Doherty Library.    

In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden

In This House of Brede
by Rumer Godden
The Viking Press, 1969

In This House of Brede was published in 1969, and the story begins about fifteen years before that in 1954.  As the outside world (including the Church) becomes more volatile, even the enclosed world of the Benedictine nuns in Brede Abbey feels these fluctuations.  The sisters must use central heating because there aren’t enough novices to chop the amount of wood needed to heat the entire convent (as there has been in previous years).  Novices who have lived in the world and enjoyed prestigious careers are entering the enclosure.  Friends outside the convent face issues of abortion and emotional abuse.  And a young priest who visits the Abbey suggests that the time is coming soon when nuns will wear modern dress rather than complicated habits so that they may work more efficiently.

The nuns of Brede Abby aren’t interested in novelty however.  Their lives have been too much marked by change.  They don’t wish to give up their habits for modern garb for they only recently have been allowed to adopt their distinctive clothing.  As a Roman Catholic order in England, they were compelled to hide in secret and eventually to flee to France during the Reformation.  Only tenuously settled in France, they fled back to England during the oppression of religious orders by the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution.  England was still virulently anti-catholic, and they could only wander until a noblewoman took pity on them and gave them property they were forbidden by law to purchase.  Even though they had found a home, it was years before they were allowed to build an enclosure and wear habits.

And the nuns’ daily lives have enough change for them as well.  As the story opens, the abbess of the order who has ruled for thirty two years dies, leaving the convent with a strange sense of disorder as much as loss.  The sisters soon discover that Lady Abbess’s first assistant is also dying.  The new leadership must soon deal with a case of fiscal irresponsibility that threatens the convent with great harm.  The nuns’ day to day living, moving in sameness and with a minutia of detail, gives them the peace to weather the chaos.  These are women with strong and very different personalities all trying to manage to live together (and be holy together).  In general, they do it very successfully.   

It is interesting to note how much the culture of England affects this other-worldly life of Brede.  A class system of choir nuns, who pray and study, and claustral nuns, who work and labor, exists even here.  Occasionally a member of the upper class will choose the life of a claustral nun, but in general educated, genteel women become choir nuns while working class women become claustral nuns.  It is the claustral nuns who can tell just by looking at a postulant if she will have to stamina to stay at Brede.

The style of the novel is an odd combination of a third-person omniscient narrator and stream of consciousness narrative.  Various details, particularly the back-story of the main character Dame Philippa Talbot, are revealed slowly and randomly. 

In This House of Brede was made into a made-for-tv movie starring Diana Rigg in 1975, back during the glory days of made-for-tv movies before they degenerated into saccharine portrayals of the disease of the week or studies of women in peril threatened by ill-chosen men.  Although its 105 minute running time means that it leaves out much of the glorious detail of the 369 page book, and certain plot points must be changed to accommodate that, it is still one of the best movie adaptations of a book I have ever seen.  Doherty Library has both the book and the movie available.

The Song at the Scaffold by Gertrud von le Fort

The Song at the Scaffold
by Gertrud von le Fort
originally titled: Die Letzte am Schafott
translated from the German by Olga Marx
Sheed and Ward, 1933 

Despite its gruesome historical context of the French Revolution, The Song at the Scaffold by Gertrud von le Fort is a exquisite little gem of a book.  It’s only 110 pages so even the busiest reader can pick it up.  Reading it is almost like going on retreat at a cloister – a charming break from the every day routine and grind. 

Le Fort based her story on the historical martyrdom of sixteen Carmelite nuns in the last days of the Reign of Terror.  She, however, invented the main character of Blanche de la Force whom she admitted was based in some ways on her own experiences, especially of the horrors of war.  Blanche is a fearful, timid, anxious child not altogether suited to the difficult, ascetic life of Carmel.  She joins the cloister partially because she believes it is a place where she will find peace.  But distress follows her, for the Revolution begins soon after she enters, and with it persecution of clergy and religious in France.  Blanche has a crisis of vocation and abandons the convent before it is raided and the other Carmelite sisters arrested, tried and sentenced to the guillotine.  Blanche secretly attends the execution and while the nuns ascend the scaffold, a miracle happens.  As the introduction to the English translation states “The Divine purpose, we seem to understand, could not have been achieved without the service of the weakness of fear.  A timid girl seeks refuge in flight, and out of that running away come victory and unforgettable beauty.”

The Song at the Scaffold was turned into the play Dialogues of the Carmelites by Georges Bernanos, and this dramatization became the hauntingly beautiful opera Dialogues des Carmélites composed by Francis Poulenc.  The Song at the Scaffold and Dialogues of the Carmelites are available at Doherty Library.

Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy

Circle of Friends

by Maeve Binchy

Delacorte Press, 1991

ISBN: 0385301499

When I first read Circle of Friends many years ago, I had planned to read a little bit while I was eating my lunch and then go back to the paper I was working on.  I stopped to eat lunch about noon.  I finally put the book down when I finished it at 3:30am.  The second time I read the book, I did the same, even though I already knew everything that was going to happen.  Binchy is perfect for airplane reading.  I’ve easily endured even a ten hour flight with one of her books for they are engrossing but not mentally taxing.

 

Maeve Binchy writes what we in library land call a “domestic novel.”  A domestic novel emphasizes the relationships among characters more than thrilling or unusual plot elements.  Writers of domestic fiction include Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and George Eliot.  Modern practitioners might be Rebecca Wells, Amy Tan, and Sue Monk Kidd.  Domestic novels are not the same as “Chick Lit,” but they do tend to appeal more to women than to men.  The stories often center on a small group of people such as members of a family or town.  However, Binchy’s novel, like the novels of Charles Dickens, begins with several disparate groups of people who have no relationship and nothing in common and ultimately intertwines them all with each other.  Even characters that may run into each other only once can have a profound impact on each other’s lives.

 

Circle of Friends is ostensibly about the pains of first love.  Bernadette, or Benny, Hogan is the adored and overprotected daughter of older parents in a small Irish village.  Her best friend is the orphaned cast-off of the village’s richest and most powerful family.  At college they join forces with the ambitious, proud, icy daughter of a tawdry working class urban family.  Benny is the plainest of the three, but she catches the eye of the college darling, wealthy, handsome, charming Jack Foley.  In 1950’s Ireland first love includes facing moral questions of whether to “go all the way,” and what happens when somebody does.  But that’s just a minor part of the story.   The main subject is the growth of a young woman from timidity and self-doubt to strength, self-assurance and economic independence.  This independence is reflected in Ireland’s growing economic independence through the years.                                                                                                                                                        

Catholicism permeates Binchy’s novels because Catholicism permeated the lives of the Irish – especially in the middle of the last century.  As Ireland has become more secularized so have Binchy’s plots.  However, the ultimate force that enables the Benny to achieve her independence gathers strength from her traditional background which includes association with the Church.  Clergy and religious women are treated by Binchy as any other characters.  Some are villainous or stupid as other non-religious characters also are.  But for the most part characters in religious life are like any other – mainly good, sometimes somewhat flawed, trying to get by and get along with others as human beings do.     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Circle of Friends has been made into a movie starring Minnie Driver and Chris O’Donnell.  It was ok as movie adaptations go, but as always the book is so much better. 

Circle of Friends is available at Doherty Library or any public library.